SHTTL: The Last Day Before the Invasion — Ady Walter with Moshe Lobel & Saul Rubinek

SHTTL director Ady Walter and actors Moshe Lobel and Saul Rubinek discuss the film’s powerful portrait of Jewish life in a shtetl just before the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe. What was life like in a Jewish shtetl just before the world changed forever? In this episode of INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, we explore SHTTL, director Ady Walter’s striking film about life in a Jewish village on the eve of World War II, through conversations with the filmmaker and two of the film’s stars. In this conversation you’ll hear about recreating a lost world on screen, the role of Yiddish language and culture in the film, and how the cast approached portraying a community on the brink of historic upheaval. The word shtetl—Yiddish for the small towns across Eastern Europe where many Ashkenazi Jewish communities lived before the Holocaust—often carries a sense of nostalgia. For those born after the Shoah, it can evoke the dreamlike villages of Marc Chagall’s paintings or the storytelling of Isaac Bashevis Singer. But Walter’s film offers something more complex. SHTTL reveals a vibrant community filled with debates about religion, politics, gender roles, economics, and identity—a living world that feels surprisingly contemporary. The film has resonated strongly with audiences, recently becoming the longest-running film at New York’s New Plaza Cinema, where it has played continuously for more than 20 weeks. For this episode, we recorded three separate conversations with key members of the film’s creative team: *Ady Walter, speaking from Paris, discusses recreating a lost world and bringing Yiddish culture and pre-war Jewish life to the screen. *Saul Rubinek, the acclaimed actor and filmmaker who grew up speaking Yiddish in Montreal, reflects on his personal connection to the language and the story. *Moshe Lobel, the film’s star, shares his own relationship to Yiddish and the cultural traditions portrayed in the film. Together, these conversations offer a deeper look at the history, culture, and filmmaking behind SHTTL About the film SHTTL: Directed by Ady Walter, SHTTL is a historical drama set in a Jewish village in Eastern Europe on the eve of the Nazi invasion in 1941. Filmed largely in Yiddish, the film follows a community navigating questions of tradition, politics, identity, and modern life during the final hours before everything changes. @Laemmle @officialRaphaelSbarge @insideTheArthouse @moshelobellao @menemshafilms #SHTTL #SHTTLFilm #MosheLobel #MoisheLobel #SaulRubinek #AdyWalter #YiddishFilm #YiddishCinema #JewishCinema #JewishHistory #Shtetl #IndependentFilm #ArthouseCinema #InternationalCinema #FilmInterview #InsideTheArthouse Find clips from this interview @INSIDETHEARTHOUSEclips ​ INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE features conversations with filmmakers, actors, and industry leaders shaping independent and international cinema.

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